


The Doctor's day off

by Mother_of_Dragons



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: & that's on box braids luv... literally, F/M, Gen, i'll revamp it at some point, implied poc! (black) reader, look at us... reading (and writing) Dr. Who fanfic in 2019... who would've thought it, midkey bad... but I want to post it now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:01:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21824083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mother_of_Dragons/pseuds/Mother_of_Dragons
Summary: “I need you to take me home”
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	The Doctor's day off

**Author's Note:**

> * = explanation in notes below.

It’s been a slow day— well, just about as slow as it gets in the TARDIS, seeing as there will always be indigenous races, planets and solar systems to be admired, endangered and saved - in that order.

Any other given day - in fact, _most_ days - they seem to attract the Doctor (and subsequently, _you_ ) like a moth to a flame, but you’ve had a hectic, jam-packed week of non-stop adventures and so are entitled to a little time off to recuperate.

Of course, for the Doctor this means flitting about fiddling with the central console for the sake of ‘improvements’.

Unsurprisingly, it’s where you find him - wrapped up in his own little world below deck as he pokes and prods through an open panel with his screwdriver, the non-sonic kind. 

“I need you to take me home”

Startling suddenly at the sound of your voice, you watch in amusement as he swings a little too far forward and has to reach out to steady himself before he has the chance to fall, a sight which is made all the more comical by the upside down view that you have from above. 

“Haven’t I told you not to sneak up on me while I’m working?” he shouts up at you, half-incensed, half-amused and 100% too distracted to notice that he’s resting the screwdriver upon a clump of exposed wiring - well, at least until sparks begin to fly.

“No” you respond, plainly, as he yelps in more shock than pain, drops the implement in surprise and pushes off from the wall, away from the wiring. Above deck, the scanner lets out a whine that could rival the sonic’s in pitch and volume as the screen goes haywire and blips to static. 

“No what?” he asks, voice muffled from alternating between sucking on his stinging finger and wringing his hand. The noise, coupled by the ringing of countless other controls and thingamabobs, is near-deafening now and you have to clamp your hands over your ears just to hear yourself think.

“No, you never told me not to sneak up on you as you work!” you parrot back to him in as much as a yell as you can manage, leaning back from over the railing to deftly fix the damage he’s caused, surprising yourself by how much you've managed to pick up on your travels as you reset the time rotor.

The shrill whine comes to a stop and the scanner flickers back to life as he disentangles himself from the swing (unceremoniously, by the sound of those clattering tools) and clambers up the stairs behind you.

“Oh, right. Well, I’m telling you now” he’s looking at you now, squinting a little with his silly half smile that has you smiling too.

You can tell that he knows something’s different about you, although he can’t quite put his finger on it.

He almost gets it, but then his expression flips, brow furrows in the middle and he turns away from you with a brief shoulder pat, flips a few switches - typical idle hands.

He doesn’t respond when you call out his name, shrugs off your hand like a glum child when you place it on _his_ shoulder and then promptly apologises with a sigh as he pulls a lever and the ground beneath you begins to shake. 

“You want to go home”

He makes it sound like it isn’t a question - like it’s final - and everything clicks into place as you’re forced to grab ahold of the helm to steady yourself - god, you can be just as oblivious as him sometimes!

“Doctor, I don’t _want_ to go home - I _need_ to go home”

You can’t help but laugh as you say it; the TARDIS is hurtling through time and space, the Doctor is sulking and you’re _laughing_ because the distinction between the two is important and he hasn’t quite gotten it yet. But he’s curious, you can tell - he keeps glancing at you from the corner of his eye, glancing and frowning and looking away when you catch him. Somewhere in his mind, he knows that you’re not leaving for good, but he’s just so brilliant and emotional and entirely too preoccupied with thinking about the goings on at 13 Bannerman road, how infrequently he gets to request a parley in compliance with Article 15 of the Shadow Proclamation (a shame really, considering how much he loves saying ‘parley’) and all sorts of other wibbly wobbly timey wimey… _stuff_ to realise.

A classic case of simply overthinking it; with a mind like his, racing at a million thoughts per second, he’s simply thinking too fast about too many things to notice what’s right in front of him.

“Your hair’s different”

Until now.

The thud of the TARDIS landing as he yanks down the handbrake coincides with his revelation and is a little too on the nose, but you can appreciate it nonetheless because at least he’s not frowning anymore. In fact, he practically collides into you as he envelops you in an all-consuming hug, all sunshine and rainbows now. He pulls back before long, grips you at arm's length and rubs your arms before exclaiming “It’s all puffy!”

Not quite what you were going for, but a quick glance at the black screen of the scanner reveals that he’s right, so you nod.

Suddenly, he’s restless - like a child left unsupervised in a sweet shop - and he can’t settle on trying to touch it or keeping his hands at his side and so, instead, he promptly lets you know that “Your hair looks like candy floss” and dances out of reach before you can pull his suspenders taught and snap them as payback.

“I’m not leaving, I’m just getting my hair done”

With everything else going on, it's easy to forget that he's never seen your hair out of its braids before.*

It's been a good few weeks and, to your credit, you'd managed to keep it relatively fresh - but, seeing as you'd rather not face the next imminent alien invasion looking (as Amy puts it) ‘raggedy’, you had resolved to getting it done sooner rather than later. 

"I knew that"

You know better than to believe him, but the thought of familiar, lush greenery and a sky sans multiple suns beckons, so you hum in agreement rather than tease him about it, watching for a moment as he tweaks his bowtie before you turn to leave with a conspiratorial "See you in a mo", comforted by the fact that before you knew it, you'd be back amongst the stars with your brilliant, and occasionally clueless, Doctor.

**Author's Note:**

> So, it's never explicitly stated that the reader is Black, but here it's implied that she's leaving  
> 'to get her hair done' by which I meant that she's getting extensions, specifically box braids  
> which I was getting as I wrote this (self-indulgent, I know) and took approximately ~7 hours,  
> in case you were wondering why she doesn't just plait her hair in her room or something ghjsh.
> 
> Anyway, read this however you want to ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> (p.s. I stole some lines of this from a Dr. Who fic I wrote when I was like 12, if I ever revamp & post that  
> you may see some similarities)


End file.
